subject: Buy Football Shirts To Celebrate The New Season [print this page] The boys are back in townThe boys are back in town. Pitches all over the UK have come alive this weekend to the sounds of triumphant crowds, that unmistakeable blast of the referees whistle. Yes the football season has started once again. And this one looks set to spin off a few departures from the norm a couple of surprises, here and there, to challenge the orders of the top flight teams in each division. Its a good time to buy football shirts: to get ones colours up to date and ready for what could be a triumphant season.
A giant killing cup run, perhaps, is beckoning: or an unexpected finishing place in the top three. Promotion, European glory the promises of these things are running before every team in the land. In order to make their dreams a reality, as we all know by now, a team needs some help from its fans some support in voice and colour that they can translate, on the pitch, into victorious action. What better way to start that chain reaction than to buy football shirts in the new seasons colours? When the team runs out and sees the stadium awash in that new kit, they feel that they are part of a much larger team, a team of thousands and thats when they start playing like they believe they can win.
Belief, of course, is everything in sport and indeed in life. Football shirts are more than a badge of allegiance, of honour or support they are a statement of belief. Belief in the potential of ones team to do it, to go all the way, confound the experts, play the game and get the rewards that every child in the land has dreamed of whilst rolling around in the mud between a pair of jumpers. British fans buy football shirts to mark their hopes and dreams, to wear their wants on their chests for all to see. When a team can see that those desires are being so proudly marked out, almost territorially, so strong is the desire well, then they fall in with that oldest of British expressions play up, play up and play the game as though they were already assured of victory.
The psychological value of the football shirt is undeniable, both for fan and team. It marks one out as part of the clan, the tribe and it signals to the adored ones, those eleven men legging it around a rectangle of grass in pursuit of an inflated piece of PVC, that their struggles are not in vain. That their battles do not go unnoticed. To buy football shirts has very little, unlike the purchase of anything else in the UK wardrobe, to do with fashion: its about hope, and expectation, and aligning oneself with an ideal no matter how ludicrous it might seem at the time. A very British pastime, then, and one that receives an injection of fresh life every season. Now is the time, while all those boys in all those teams still believe that anything is possible.
